[Transcript starts at 1:03]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet a another episode of my favorite podcast. If you're listening to this when it drops, it is Monday, June 24th. Holy shit. The month is done. Welcome to the end of June. Today we were talking about, or I'm answering the question, am I too old for Instagram?
I received this question from, uh, one of my maestro meeting homies and I was like, this is, we'll go into it. We will go into it. But first, uh, I want to do a little life updates, a little business updates, and then we'll get into, into talking about that. So as it relates to the life updates, basically no news is good news.
It's the same, same for, you know, Lex and I right now, it's just like people keep asking like, what are you doing? How's things? And I'm like, it's the same, which is what I love. Summer is here. Summer Sundays are going down. And for those of you that don't know, summer Sundays has been basically, it's been the whole entire day at the beach. So Lex and I play volleyball. Our class starts at 630 and then we play games after. And then it's just like, we [00:01:00] go for a walk. Um, obviously we haven't really necessarily like sitting on the beach because it's like it's a little bit colder. Um, for those of you that have visited SoCal, you know, it's like, it's not like Mexico.
Um, but once the end of June comes, once it's July, August, September, October, it's nice. And like, you want to sit on the beach or you'll be walking on the beach. It's just very, very nice. So typically what I'll do is I'll get my work done on Friday and or Saturday, kind of spread it across those two days.
And then that leaves me all of Sunday to do that so gotta figure out the logistics of it cuz of moose But she is on her big dog bullshit when I say big dog bullshit I mean actually good shit because she doesn't need to go out that often and I'm not like being like a bad owner. She just like I will take her out sometimes and if she doesn't have to go she will not go. Like I'll be walking around.
She's like, nah, I don't got to go. So what I typically do is I'll take her out very late, like 11 or 12 at night, um, on, on Saturday nights. And this way she's good to like very late the next day. Um, so I got to figure that out because typically we've been, I mean, we've actually been coming home pretty late anyway.
Usually we kind of stay [00:02:00] and we come home around, I don't know, uh, like one or two, but summer Sundays is typically like three or four. So kind of figure that out there. But either way, the weather has. changed and I can walk her at night with a t shirt and it's good. The days are long. We got that amazing golden hour.
I can, we can sit by the fire. We have like a little fire table at night. It's great. So, you know, just want to be chilling and enjoying the days and that's what we are doing. So, uh, we will head back next month to see my family, uh, for Thanksgiving in July, right? Y'all know if you have kids, and I know a lot of you do, and I think a lot of you realize this, but if you don't have kids, it's okay.
But you have like nieces or nephews and things like that. Kids really show us how fast time is going, right? Because you like see them and the next time you see them you're like, how are you, how are you as big as me? How are you 15 already? Like what? And so my, my sister has, has two kids and that was really, I was just like, holy shit, like I see them once a year for Thanksgiving and I'm just like, Y'all growing too much too fast.
Like I have to see you more often. I realize like I'm not I'm not seeing you enough. [00:03:00] So we're- I copied Jill right? She does Christmas in July because she goes home for Christmas. I don't go for Christmas we go to Lex's family Christmas for Christmas, but we do go home for Thanksgiving. And so we've added Thanksgiving in July, which is costing a million dollars like the flights. What's happening?
1 million. But this is part of the reason that, you know, part of my best life, it's being able to go home. I'm making enough money that I can go home and not like cry too much about the flight. So, uh, but yeah, that's the end of it for the life updates as it relates to the business updates, business reminders, business announcement.
I only got one for you. Don't forget I got that free 90 minute training coming up. It's actually this Thursday, June 27th. It is called foundations and fundamentals for starting an online business. It's for health and fitness professionals who, surprise, want to start an online business or think they might want to start an online business, but they don't know what to do and they want to know what do I need to do?
What exactly do I need to do? Where do I start? How long is it going to take? What is the tech that I should be looking into? I got you. [00:04:00] It's free. There is no pitch. I'm not going to sell you into anything at the end. It's just my way of combating all the bullshit that is, is out there. Yes, you will have to give me your email address to sign up for it.
That will put you on my email list. If you want to unsubscribe afterwards, you can go right ahead and do that. But it's the only way that I can communicate with you. Um, I honestly just want people to start off on the right leg, right? Like, I don't think that starting off in this online space needs to cost you a zillion dollars. And I, was receiving some inquiries.
I had like a little uptick in inquiries, inquiries about this. So just like, Hey, I think I'm gonna start online. Like, what do I need to do? And I was like, I realized I don't have like a podcast episode about it. And it would be too long. Right. I don't have a single resource for this. So I was like, let me do it.
Let me run it live. It will then live and I can decide what I want to do with it from there. Um, but I'm actually very excited to do this and just give people the honest. You know the honest truth about it and and you know, hopefully set them up for success. There's just so much nonsense out there and just like build a course first.
No, don't fucking build a course first. Have a membership. No, don't fucking have a membership. This is gonna take a month three months for you to start having ten thousand dollar months. No, it's [00:05:00] fucking not. If you hit it in three years amazing. Like this shit takes a long time. So I am very firm in my beliefs and they have not changed much over the years. Uh, but now I just have a lot of, uh, objective data to support it.
I've taken hundreds of people through it and I'm like, no, this is actually the truth. This is what it takes. This is what it looks like. And I have a bunch of resources. One of the things I've always prided myself on is being like that connector person. And I have, you know, financial resources. I have legal resources for people.
I have tech resources for people so that when they are ready to lean on these things, it's like, Hey, no, go to this person, go to that person and let's set you up for success. So again, June 27th, that is this Thursday, 4 p. m. Pacific, 90 minutes long. It's free. And yes, there will be a recording. The link is in the show notes.
Thank you, Courtney, so that you can save your spot. Uh, and then hopefully I will see you there.
So speaking of online business. This is the segue. Speaking of online business, I've been having some really, really good Maestro Meetings. So for those of you that don't know, Maestro Meetings is my one on one hour long business consulting calls.
Um, and anyone can sign up for them. There's [00:06:00] no like filter mechanism. There's no anything beforehand. It's like, if you want to sign up for it, fucking sign up for it. And if we, this has never happened, but my safety net, what I decided, cause I used to do, um, I used to do discovery calls and then I said, fuck this.
I had one that, I found that people were just basically using those calls to get information out of me for free, and I was like, fuck this, like, I'm not doing it. So actually, we can link that episode, Courtney. Thank you again. Um, so, for those of you that are wondering why I don't do, why I don't do discovery calls or, you know, anything around that.
Um, I don't need to do them for what I do. It's different if, it would be different if I was, you know, doing a done for you service, something like that. But I don't, I'm meeting live with people. And so from the jump, I'm like, let's charge for this. Um, I have a really extensive intake form. Um, and my, like I was going to say, my kind of safety net for this is that if I ever found someone that was like really not a good fit, I would just give them their money back and be like, yo, you've got somehow managed to come to the wrong place.
Uh, I'm going to give you your money back, but it is 397. So [00:07:00] it's 400 for that hour long call. And I think the price alone also just weeds people out. And they're just like, they're going to make sure on their own that they are a good fit. And that this is going to be a good fit before they spend it. So, uh, we will link that in the show notes to the, the link to like check out what the, the pages, the information page around it.
And if you want to sign up for one, um, but I've just been getting some really, really good calls and folks that are really, really good fits. And they just really, really, really get it. Um, they've all been in my ecosystem for a bit and it shows, right? And I fucking love it. When people are in your ecosystem, it takes a long time for them.
It takes a long time for them to actually sign up. You know, they're going to be a good fit because they've been hearing you, believing you, right? Like you're just on the same page with things. And that's what I've been getting. And so on my, one of my most recent ones, a person, she brought up the question, am I too old for Instagram?
Right? She didn't directly ask me this. It was more of a thought as to what's been holding her back from posting and showing up and working towards growing a personal brand using Instagram. Real talk, it is a super valid question. [00:08:00] She just turned 40. I am 39. I will be 40 on January 1st. And one thing I said to her was that I have a huge advantage over her, in that I started 10 years ago.
And the advantage is not that I started then, it was that I was 30 when I started and I had a whole lot more fucks to give. All right. I was excited about the work I was doing. Not that I'm not excited about this work, but y'all know if you're, if you're in my age, around this age, you get it. Right. Like I was very excited about that work.
I was, I was a full time clinician. I'm all, I didn't love it. I was excited to talk about movement stuff. Right. I was excited to share all the stuff that I was doing. Right. I had the desire, the capacity to treat all day and then make content. I'm like banging my necklace. I'm moving around, moving around a lot.
I was more willing. I was way more willing, folks to listen to people's excuses. Now I'm like, I don't fucking care. You don't want to do it. I don't fucking care. I talk about this a lot that I've left the business of convincing. Part of this was when I was still in the business of convincing. I want to say by the time I turned 30, I was probably like on my way out the business of convincing, but I was still more in it than I am now.
Now I'm like, I don't fucking care. You [00:09:00] don't want to do it. I don't care. Go do something else then. I'm not going to sit here and be like, no, you should use Instagram. No, you should show up. I don't fucking care. Do whatever you want. If you want my help, would love to help you. If you want to put the stick in your own bicycle tire, go ahead.
I'm not gonna pick you up. It's all, it's all on you, right? The, the prize, the reward for fighting for your limitations is that you get to keep them, okay? It's all on you. So all that today, all that to say, starting now, would be objectively tough. Right? I said, it's starting now, like at this age, at my age, at our age, if you're watching this and we're the same age, it would be tougher, right?
The question here, and the question that I asked her is what's the alternative? What the fuck else are you going to do? And in asking this, I am speaking to the person who has something to say and truly wants to build this personal brand and say something, right? If you just want money, which is fine. All right.
Find a job that pays well and doesn't kill your soul, right? Figure out at that job, how to make yourself [00:10:00] indispensable, get some leverage there, then get some leverage and then see if you can create some time flexibility. Cause that's really the ultimate goal in my opinion, with, uh, having your own online business.
It's a time flexibility. It's not location independence, it's not time freedom. Time freedom is a lie, right? You still have to fucking work if it's a business. Location independence, my girl, Melissa Koehl, made a really good point about this, that means that you can work from anywhere, which for many people means that they end up working while they're on vacation, which I don't mind doing, right?
But it's not like, oh, it's this great, this great thing. I talk to Jill about this all the time. Where like, you can unplug, but at the same time, you have a job as a, if you're an online business owner, that like, never like turns off. Like, there's always something you could be doing, right? Her boyfriend, Keith, uh, is a firefighter.
And so he like, leaves that job at the job. He like, comes home. He's not like, thinking about firefighter stuff, right? Whereas if you're an online business, you're like, well, I could always be doing something. I work from here, right? So, it's, location independence isn't, in my opinion, the goal. It is time flexibility, so that you get to decide when and where if you want, but you get to decide when you work on the things.
You still have to [00:11:00] work on them, but you get to decide when. And then you can go to the beach and not be working on it if you don't want to. Right. So back to the question, am I too old for Instagram? Objectively speaking, right? There are all different ages on Instagram. And even if there are more quote unquote, younger people on there, those younger people ain't got no fucking money, right?
That's not a good demographic to go after. The goal with using Instagram for online business is to build an audience and then monetize that audience directly by having them pay you for whatever service it is that you offer, right? We are not monetizing the platform, right? We're monetizing the audience.
So something like YouTube, you're monetizing the platform. I mean, the platform is paying you. With Instagram, the way that I teach it, the way that I coach it, is that the audience at some point will pay you for whatever expertise it is that you have, whatever service it is that you provide. All right. The first example that comes to mind and always my like best example is my girl, Tracy.
I've talked, I talk about her a lot in this show. Um, she's just, she's just like the best. I'm she's fitness with Tracy, um, on [00:12:00] Instagram. She helps women over 50. With their fitness. Some of them have never even worked out before and I fucking love that. All right. So that demographic is on Instagram. She has a hundred and over a hundred thousand followers.
I think it's 130, 000. I don't know. It's, it's a very high number more than me. Those people are on there. All right. So like, yes, your people are on Instagram. One of the things that I want to think about, I would like you to think about, and I, maybe I'll make an episode about this, but we'll speak about it.
Speaking about it now is, it's not so much that we're concerned, like, is the age demographic on there? It's really that, are people in that demographic using Instagram as a resource? And I think that across the board, yes. Right. I think about this cause Lex does SEO and with SEO, right, you're looking, it's, it's going to be people that are using the internet to find, using Google and such to find the answers and to find their providers.
I know that I'm primarily going to be looking on Instagram. Like, I may not necessarily search on Instagram, but I want to see what they have on there. And I'm going to use that to build familiarity. I'm not going to just like go [00:13:00] to the, to Google and look to find someone and then like, look on the website and be like, okay, yeah, this is the person.
I would then double check that with Instagram. Right. So like my preferred way of searching and getting to know someone and getting to trust someone is Instagram. That's what we're really looking for when we're saying, are people on there is, is do the people that use social media exist within this demographic.
And yes, they exist across, across the board, but it's like, I'll probably do something, an episode on that. Cause it is something that I have really thought about a lot more just having conversations with Lex and her doing all the SEO stuff. Cause I'm like, this is great. And like, what we talk about, what we teach is very similar, but then it really highlighted and opened my eyes to like how people search for things and how people look to build trust.
Like I would look for someone that like is a recommendation for someone else. Yeah. Via Instagram. So like, you know, I brought on Matt McInnes, Matt McInnes Watson, and I found him on Instagram. Right. And same thing with Ben Patrick. Like I found them all through Instagram. It wasn't, podcasts, and then [00:14:00] when double checked on Instagram, excuse me, it wasn't that, you know, I Googled it and it came up.
Right. So just something to think about. But back to this, this question, let's call a spade a spade, right? When it comes to Instagram, there's a huge aspirational quality, quality to it, right? It's a visual platform, meaning that folks are often followers are also often looking to, you know, look like, be like, feel like, live like the person that they are seeing on the screen.
I will also just interject there, happiness is the most aspirational quality, okay, before you go to like purely physical attributes, but I think that this is, that this is an advantage, right? The fact that it is, there is that aspirational quality or nature to Instagram. Real talk, how the fuck are you going to be 40 and wanting advice from a 20 year old?
I don't, I personally don't like, what the fuck do you do about anything? I, and honestly, if someone online is 40, is 50 and they are wanting advice from a 20 year old, you don't want them as your client. They have just unrealistic, they're living in the past, [00:15:00] right? Unrealistic expectations, unrealistic unrealistic goals.
Right. So. One of the reasons that the, the person that inspired this episode, one of the reasons that she signed up with me was because of my age, right? She, or perceived age, she didn't know exactly how old I was, but she was like, I think we're about the same age, we're in the same age group. And therefore, you know, she believed that we had the same, you know, we had similar, um, life views, right?
Similar, similar or shared views. Which allowed then she, which then in her mind allowed, would allow her to feel heard, to feel seen, to be seen. And then it did, like on her call I was like, yes, I fucking get you, I know exactly what you're talking about. Same, same for whatever age you are and the demographic that is the same age as you. Last thing here is I do believe that we give less, we give and we have less fucks to give as we get older. Use that. Ideally you are less, I shouldn't say ideally but realistically it's been my experience that you're less concerned with impressing people. You're less [00:16:00] concerned with upset less concerned about upsetting people.
You're have a better grasp on what actually, you know matters to you That's a big fucking leg up. If you're 20, you're, you know, early 20s, late 20s, even early 30s for some people, like you're just like so concerned with other people's perception of you and so you don't post certain things, you don't say certain things, you get older and you're like, I don't fucking care, this is my belief, this is what I think, this is my life experience, this is what I know, this is what I know to be true, this is what I've done and helped all these hundreds of people with, and you can share that, right, and build an audience around that.
So I think that if you are older, whatever definition of older you have, you can flip the script and use it to your advantage, right? Lean into your age. This is business 101, right? I don't think that you are your niche, but your lived experiences can help shape the niche. In this case, lean into your age, right?
If age is really on your mind, if it's not, then fuck it. But if age is really on your mind, lean in. My ecosystem, you folks listening to this, watching this, it's largely health and fitness professionals. We're in the movement world. Lean [00:17:00] in right. Fitness over 50 plyometrics over 40 nutrition over 40. Right.
And for things that are the same, irrespective of age. Right, because we're seeing it in the menopause space and it's just like, yo, you should be doing the same, the same shit across the board. Like, you should be lifting, you should be walking, you should be managing stress, you should be drinking fucking water.
People are just monetizing this, like, grifters are like, oh, it's a special thing for menopause now. And it's like, motherfucker, you should always been done, been doing this. But for things that are the same irrespective of age, fucking say it. All right, if you think that people are using age as an excuse, say it.
Even within this episode, right? I'm talking about, you know, starting on Instagram. Age is a factor. It's not an excuse. It's not like you're too old. You're not, objectively not too old. Do you have less fucks to give? Yes, but maybe that's a benefit. Right? Might it be harder because you have more responsibilities and so you have less time?
Maybe. But the flip side is that, of that, is that now you have like confined area, uh, amounts of time to get it done. Right? Parkinson's law is real. Work will expand to fill in the amount of time that it [00:18:00] is allowed. Work will expand to fill in or take up the time that is allotted. You give it less time, it takes less time.
Right? So, Understand what age brings with it, as it relates to your niche, your niche, and then proceed accordingly, right?
So, long story short, no, I do not think that anyone is too old for Instagram. If you just don't want to do it, because you don't want to do it, you don't have the energy, you don't have the time, you don't care about it.
And that's a different fucking story, right? But, like I always say, Instagram, online business, it's a long play game and not everyone who plays gets to win, right? The space is crowded. The space is noisy. And the way that you cut through that noise is by being specific and repetitive. Age could absolutely be something that allows you to be specific so lean in.
All right. All right. Shout out to the dope homie who inspired this episode. You know who you are. Don't forget, 100 percent free training going on this Thursday, June 27th 4 p. m PST. The Foundations of Fundamentals for [00:19:00] Starting an Online Business. The link to register and save your spot will be in the show notes.
And yes, there will be a recording. We're talking fast today I am feeling so rejuvenated revived re energized. It's Monday. I love it. All right, that's it. As always, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until next time, friends, Maestro out.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
Get the FREE Foundations and Fundamental for Online Business training!
Get a yourself a Maestro Meeting
MOTM #487: Why I Stopped Offering Discovery Calls
Catch me on the socials: Instagram | YouTube | Threads | TikTok | Facebook